Find the humor in public defecation, a fifteen year old's menstrual cycle, Halle Berry degrading herself, and incestuous relationships before seeing this film

Movie 43 is a collection of twelve short films starring twenty-five big
name celebrities and not containing even a fraction of the laughs in
its ninety-seven minute runtime. Connected in a disjointed manner and
baiting the audience by a filled cast, this is one of the most
unpleasant times at the movies one could have. Not since Garry
Marshall's Valentine's Day have we seen so many shining actors succumb
to such joylessly impotent material. Only this time, the material is
not only impotent, but crass and well over the line of reprehensibility
to the point where one shakes their head and assures their inner-self
to walk out of the theater, walk to the nearest video store and rent as
many foreign films as they can carry.

Before I go into any of the shorts, let's have a small and formal
discussion about offensiveness. At no point was I ever personally
offended by anything Movie 43 had to offer, mainly because its attitude
to offend in every way possible was distracting and artificial. When
looking at the past films I've seen that were deemed "offensive" by
some, say, Team America: World Police, there was not only fun in its
premise, but satire in its writing.

The outlying story concerns Dennis Quaid, a desperate man who is
pitching a film idea to Greg Kinnear, a filmmaker looking to strike a
deal. Quaid will be the one introducing all the setups to Kinnear, and
we'll return to the two men after every short to watch Kinnear's
contrived reaction and Quaid's facile justification. Let's begin.

In the first short, how funny is it to see Kate Winslet and Hugh
Jackman go on a date, with everyone being oblivious to the large
scrotum attached to his neck except for Winslet? How funny is it when
Jackman accidentally gets pubic hair in his soup, and puts his
neck-scrotum on a baby's forehead? The next short shows Shameless's
Jeremy Allen White as a homeschooled teenager being tormented and
manipulated by his parents who are trying to recreate the dangers and
turmoils of high school. When the poor kid's mother tries to instigate
incestuous sex with her son I wanted to leave the theater and never
turn back. But such a thing didn't happen.

We then watch Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, who are both married in real
life, as a young couple on a romantic date when Faris pops the
question; "will you poop on me?" she asks her boyfriend. I refuse to
comment on where this goes. We are then given the awkward short of a
supermarket employee (Kieran Culkin) confessing all the dirty and
depraved details of his relationship to his ex-girlfriend (Emma Stone)
while accidentally leaving the PA system on, as a crowd of anxious
shoppers forms to watch this travesty unfold. Next comes Richard Gere
as the boss of a corporation called "iBabe," which is a music player
that is a lifelike naked woman, drumming up heaps of controversy. Then
a speed dating event involving Batman and Robin (Jason Sudeikis and
Justin Long) and Kristen Bell's "Supergirl," who is ostracized for
having an unusually large vagina.

But probably the most heartless, offensive short of them all involves
poor little Chloë Grace Moretz, who is hanging out with her boyfriend
at his home when she experiences her first period. As she is dripping
blood as if she has just been stabbed, her boyfriend's older brother
(Christopher Mintz-Plasse) helplessly runs around the house screaming
and searching for things to clog her uterus (frozen peas and a sponge,
anyone?). What follows is a dopey Leprechaun predicament involving
Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville, a basketball game where Coach
Terrence Howard tells his team that because they are facing a white
team and they are all black they will win the game, and we end on a
shallow and empty-headed note as we expected.

The only short I neglected to mention is called "Truth or Dare,"
starring Halle Berry on a blind date where she initiates a game of
truth or dare, which goes on to become a disgusting and repetitive
affair. Berry crushes guacamole with her breast (a prosthetic, I assure
you) and inserts extra-hot hot sauce into herself with a turkey baster.

I can't fathom the thought that I'm explaining this as elaborately as I
am. Did the seventeen writers and twelve directors (among them, Peter
Farrelly, Elizabeth Banks, Brett Ratner, and Bob Odenkirk) have an
ounce of self-awareness to the humor that made their past films work?
How did they manage to allow their cast of champions to succumb to
demeaning, scatological, desperately unfunny filth? Before you claim
the actors did the job for the money, I must inform you that Movie 43
is reported in only costing $6 million to make (excluding marketing
costs which I'm willing to bet are ten times more), so that argument is
almost wholly invalid. Were they genuinely smitten by the idea and the
script of it all, or did they just feel that they all played their
careers safe and decided to challenge their comfort zones and the
harmless audiences' by attempting to push boundaries? I left the
multiplex knowing three things today I had not previously grasped;
number one, the spoof/skit genre is uniformly dead, and can not even be
revived by a large group of directors, writers, and actors, all
reliable and capable. Number two, to not get high hopes for a comedy
with large names being released in the month of January. Number three,
that in no way, shape, form, or instance is a woman's menstrual cycle
funny and to victimize a fifteen year old actress is a simple act of
cruelty.

On a final note, why is Movie 43 called "Movie 43?" Who knows, who
cares?

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239 out of 397 people found the following review useful:

It's good. Sorry guys, it's good.

Look, Movie 43 is not a masterpiece of American cinema. But it doesn't
even try to be that. Quit fooling yourselves into thinking you're
better than the film. It is nothing more than what it is: tasteless,
raunchy, gut-wrenching laughable humor. Yes, in fact I did say
gut-wrenching laughter. I laughed my ass off through most of the movie.
Why? Because it was funny.

Yes, it was funny. Don't you all remember the days of Monty Python and
Airplane! and There's Something About Mary and Scary Movie? Whatever
happened to the light-hearted movies of decades ago, where it was more
important to make light of life and just about everything in it rather
than pander to some sort of artistic elite? Screw them! I still love
Benny Hill! Hollywood has been full of itself for far, far too long. We
are tired of every movie under the sun that we see having to be so
serious and making some kind of a "social statement" or having some
sort of modern-style realism. Enough. We want to laugh. We want to have
fun. We want to find ourselves engrossed in the basest of the human
experience because, well, that's something we all share in common with
one another. The animal experience of human nature is just as important
as our intellectual and psychological experience. Don't ever forget
that.

Every movie doesn't need to be over-analyzed with 50 paragraphs of
explanation on how much you hate it. Has America become so sexually
repressed that even the mere mention of sex, or seeing a nude body on
the big screen, makes everyone automatically challenge the context of
the sexuality? Some things are just as they seem -- indulgences which
make us proud to be adults and experience adult humor. If you want to
laugh at pompous violence and style, go see Tarantino's latest flick.
If you want to laugh at something unfunny, try any of the latest Renée
Zellweger or Meryl Streep borefest. Perhaps you all give Sasha Cohen a
pass because at least his raunchy stories are "coherent"? Who cares? A
movie is not bad simply because it does not conform to the Hollywood
norm, nor is it bad simply because you don't think it was deep enough.
I thought almost everybody in the picture (many talented actors and
actresses) did a fine job making us laugh. I was on the floor for half
of the movie, and my wife enjoyed it just as much as I did. Have you
all forgotten how to just let go and enjoy the moment? Wake up, guys.
There are plenty of genuinely bad movies out there. This is not one of
them.

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223 out of 380 people found the following review useful:

I would be embarrassed if I were starring in this movie

I have to be honest- I walked into this movie with pretty low
expectations to begin with. It is only on a rare occasion anymore that
I actually buy a ticket for a movie with any hope that it might
actually provide entertainment, which is a shame. This movie, however,
just lowered the bar- by a LOT. Hands down one of the worst movies that
I've ever seen- and that's saying something. It is just a gaggle of
actors working on an acid-trip of a script. Every bit of comedy is
based on shock value, which wears thin on your patience very early on.
It's gross, lewd, and utterly lacking of any wit or connection with the
audience. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this to anyone- as I
nearly went up to the box office and demanded a refund. It isn't even
that I'm a prude or hate gross-out humor, I'm 18 for crying out loud- I
just have the ability to recognize when someone put actual effort and
thought into making a movie funny and when Hollywood is laughing AT US,
instead of vice versa. Miss this one. 1/10

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282 out of 498 people found the following review useful:

Sucks.

I have never written a review before, but I feel that writing one is
the best way to clean my mind of the crappy film I have witnessed. This
movie was extremely awful. The humor attempts to be "offending", but it
instead sounds like something an 8th grader finds humorous. In fact,
even an 8th grader would tire of the pathetic nonsense that is Movie
43.

The plot centers around two teenagers that make up an outrageous
picture. However, I've heard it's different for other parts of the
world. I'm currently in the UK, so the kids wraparound is what I saw.
Their little brother looks for it on the world wide web and ends up
finding lots of clips that we get the displeasure of seeing. There's
one called "The Catch" where Kate Winslet goes on a blind date with
Hugh Jackman. However, get this: Hugh Jackman has penises where penises
aren't supposed to be! Just hear the crickets sing. I can hear the
screenwriter just laughing and laughing as he adds more unfunny jokes
about poop and semen.

Also, the hilarious basketball sketch where they comment on the fact
that basketball players are mostly black! Wow! It's so funny! Naked
women and iPads! It's funny too!

In short, Movie 43 is a disjointed mess, full of lousy jokes, terrible
writing, and actors that no doubt deserve to be in something else. Now,
I'm going to rally up Best Actor/Actresses winners to be in my new
screenplay, "Boners of Fire". Just kidding, of course. I'm not THAT
evil.

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277 out of 491 people found the following review useful:

Don't write this movie off!

What is wrong with people?!?! This movie was HILARIOUS! A certain
branch of humour admittedly, but hilarious nonetheless! Lighten up and
laugh at yourselves! You either love this movie or hate it, judging by
the votes and comments, but I loved it, and many others will too - so
give it a chance and watch, don't just read the bad reviews. I probably
wouldn't have bothered to watch either if I'd read the reviews on here
first, but I'm so glad I did!
The movie content blurs the boundaries between the surreal and reality
and takes the P out of society and ourselves. 'You couldn't make that
up' scenes that really happen - unbelievably! The hair-gel scene in
There's Something About Mary and the toilet scene in Dumb and Dumber -
these are the kinds of sequences that make up movie 43. Yes, they're
disgusting, but they do happen, and you have to laugh about the
ridiculousness of it all!

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209 out of 372 people found the following review useful:

Funny !? Really?

After a misleading Trailer I gave this "Comedy" a chance. To be honest
this is the worst movie I have ever seen. You can only laugh about the
"jokes" if you still have the humor of a 14 year old who is just
reaching puberty. Seriously. Every joke is based on penis, pussy, flat
sex and even shitting on your partner. Even the allusions towards other
movies are so horribly done that there is no way to compare this level
with a Tarantino style.

If this is how the Hollywoods "Crème de la Crème" defines self-irony
they have lost all my respect.

In Short: A Vicarious Embarrassment

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160 out of 279 people found the following review useful:

what?

OK, I must be just the type of 40+ year old infant male that this movie
was made for. I laughed my @$$ off. I'm convinced most of the reviewers
here wouldn't know a good joke if it bit them, but to each his/her own
when it comes to comedy. I don't really think its a 10, but I'm giving
it that just to stick it to you humorless snobs. Perhaps you won't find
this movie suitable to your "evolved" pallets, but for those of us that
still laugh at farts, and make dick jokes and think seeing someone
getting punched in the balls is funny, then you should be amused by
this one. I can just picture you people writing your reviews while
sipping tea and glaring through your monocles like some stereotype.

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292 out of 543 people found the following review useful:

Just No.

A group of Irish Monks needs to make payments on their belfry, so they
decide to sell flowers to make money. For weeks they sell flowers, and
it's going well. Too well in fact, they've begun to run the local
florist, Patty O'Flannigan out of town. Well, a bit cheesed at the
monks jumping in on his territory, he decides to confront them. He asks
them to step off, politely, but they simply respond that, "That's no
way to talk to men of God!", and throw him out of their monastery. For
weeks this goes on, the monks selling flowers, and the florist getting
more and more desperate to make them stop. Finally, he goes to Hugh
Mactaggart, the biggest, baddest man in town -- he could get anyone to
leave town -- so Patty decides he's the best way to get rid of the
monks, gives him the rest of the money, and retires to bed, wary of the
results. In the morning, a knock on his door reveals Mactaggart,
offering a firm handshake and saying, "They shan't be botherin' ya
again Patty." The moral of the story is, Hugh, and only Hugh, can
prevent florist friars.

I tell you this joke because it is infinitely funnier than the entirety
of Movie 43.

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118 out of 200 people found the following review useful:

Misleading trailer

I was hoping that someone was finally going to cater to those of us
with depraved senses of humor, I loved the trailer and wanted to see
this so bad that I went to the 10:30 showing on Thursday the 24th. The
first skit was moderately funny, but the rest, well... if you've seen
the trailers then you've seen the funniest parts already. No point
paying $8+ to see this thing.

Fortunately for me, I work at a movie theater and didn't drop a dime on
it, making it that much easier to walk out on it. I had just seen the
Best of Rifftrax one showing earlier and I laughed more at it than I
did Movie 43. SNL is funnier and I hate SNL. When I got home I had to
put on something really funny to cleanse my palette of this Cleveland
steamer.

I love the kind of humor contained in the trailer so I'm not one of
those people putting this movie down because it's extremely lowbrow. If
Haunted House is still showing and you have to choose between this and
it, choose Haunted House, this movie isn't worth what Anna Farris wants
her fiancé to do.

The movie should be considered a spoiler for the trailer instead of
vice versa.

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71 out of 114 people found the following review useful:

Great parody

Well I haven't laughed so much at a comedy in a long time. I saw there
are many bad reviews and, for me, is quite understandable why. The
movie is so ironic that not many can see through it and is played by
the best actors. For me is the godfather of all parody movies and is
making fun of all the clichés that are lately so often seen in movies
(and not only there), rich people, "special kids", Ichick the chase for
new nonsense fashion-technology, dating and so on. I was expecting to
see a c....y movie and i was already wondering what made those
brilliant actors to accept such a play, but I was in for a very good
surprise. For those who couldn't get the movie, sorry for your loss.
Ten out of ten